Watching the News and Ducking the Bias

People love to talk about bias in the media. Liberal bias, conservative bias, FOX News for Republicans, and MSNBC for Democrats. CNN tries to take the middle road, and its audience just keeps shrinking. But where is most of the bias really coming from? The audience. Getting your news online or through a multiplicity of cable channels means that it's easier to pick and choose your sources of information than ever, and most people like whatever reinforces their own views. Notably, CNN gets a boost whenever something really momentous happens in the world, like the rescue of the miners in Chile, because their fundamental newsgathering resources are stronger than those of their competitors. The trouble is that the rest of the time, the demagogues have center stage. I won't point fingers or name names, but I long for the second Tuesday of November to be over with, so we can stop with the airing of grievances and the rabble rousing in the lead-up to election day.

Putting aside the politics though, my personal issues with bias and media go beyond the left/right slant and simple likes and dislikes. I'm constantly catching myself skimming and ignoring important news stories on the web, only to be surprised when I see television segments about them later. The blockades and protests happening in France right now are a huge story, but I mentally just skipped right over yesterday's reports when browsing the Google news aggregation page. It's happened enough that I worry about my own invisible filters affecting how I take in information. For all the talk of journalistic biases, the biggest barrier between me and the big story is usually me, or rather my own preconceived notions. Stories about Africa, reports of the wars in Afghanistan, anything involving the Middle East conflicts between Israel and Palestine - it sounds terrible, but I'll automatically ignore them without a thought.

It bothers be me because I like being informed and I like being in the know. But every time I open a web browser to read up on the news, it's always an internal battle between reading articles that are entertaining and articles that are truly informative. I find I get sucked in by sensationalistic headlines, controversial opinion pieces, and rehashed fluff all the time. To combat this, I make myself go through a short checklist of sites and pages every day before I let myself indulge in softer articles, sort of an eat-your-vegetables-first approach to the news. First I'll look over the Google World News and US News sections, then the New York Times World News main page, then the list of the most popular articles for the World News section, then the lists of most popular and most blogged general news articles. I don't necessarily read all the articles, or even half of them, but at least I can get a good sense of what's going on in the world.

I also regularly watch the BBC World News telecast via PBS in the evenings. I started tuning in shortly after the September 11th attacks, because the American news organizations were getting too emotionally overwrought for me. Certainly they have their own biases, but I like them because they provide a more neutral outsider's point of view to whatever is going on in the U.S., and their coverage of events in other countries is much more comprehensive than what the major American networks provide. More importantly, the newscast provides a perspective, something you can't get by simply looking at a list of the major stories of the day. They choose which stories are the big ones, like the social upheaval in France, and devote more time to them. I can scroll past the stories about France in a fraction of a second on a news website, but it's much more difficult to ignore a five-minute video segment.

And while I do my best to see and hear more of the news I don't have any interest in, or don't particularly feel like consuming, I also do my best to stay away from the non-stories and molehill-turned-mountain stories that dominate certain news sources. I don't listen to talk radio. I don't watch any of the cable news networks, with the exception of CNN during big events like the mine rescue. The most I hear of commentators like Glenn Beck or Keith Olbermann is through Jon Stewart's snarky smackdowns on "The Daily Show." There's too much going on in the world to pay much attention to the fustigators that stir up outrage for ratings, even for fun. All the news commentators that I like aren't particularly photogenic and stick to print.

The only exception I make is for the entertainment news, because if opinion gets confused with the facts in that arena, well, I don't see any real harm. In Hollywood the gossip often is the news. I still hold out hope that the rest of the world doesn't have to work that way.